Kate Griffin writes about discovering the history of the St Giles rookery, London’s most notorious slum and the backdrop to her new book. Why was the area left in a state of shocking poverty for two centuries? Because of its geography, and financial expedience, she found. Hogarth’s famous 1751 depiction of Gin Lane with its […]
Delving into the history of a house
It’s a good week for anyone interested in the history of houses; a new series of A House Through Time begins, and the paperback edition of the book of the same name is out. If you’re inspired to delve into house history to find out more about the building you live in, or you’re a […]
The World As It Never Was
In our guest post this month, Edward Brooke-Hitching spills the beans on extraordinary cartographic myths, mistakes and misbeliefs through history. It was a specific form of nothing that piqued my interest in cartographic misbeliefs. ‘Donut holes’ are a curious phenomenon in maritime law, created by the passing of a 1982 UN resolution to establish the nautical […]